IRAQ: War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser April 29th, 2005
Dear Editor,
Just when I thought the Bush administration had finally settled on a story to cover the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, Zelikow’s remarks get published. Damn. Now I’ve got to forget another version of the excuses Bush tells. Which one are we on by how?
LATIN AMERICA: New Pope a Disappointment to Progressives, Women April 27th, 2005
Dear Editor,
This story clearly demonstrates the ignorance and blindness among “progressivesâ€? who continue to call themselves Catholic, yet walk to the beat of a different drummer. The Pope is a real Catholic who must protect and defend the faith… not abandon it. These women who persist in pushing the feminist agenda in favour of women´s ordination are beating a dead horse. If they would only become familiar with the theology behind the teaching of a male-only priesthood, they would surely be ashamed of themselves for attempting to undermine a beautiful truth.
CORRUPTION: Double Trouble for Halliburton April 27th, 2005
Dear Editor,
This is an excellent column on corruption in Halliburton. One wonders why none of this is reported in the evening news on NBC, CBS or ABC? Nor is it discussed in the New York Times or Washington Post… All of them are busy with Michael Jackson case and baseball drug usage and serious issues of that sort.
CORRUPTION-NEPAL: All the King’s Men Try to Fix a Broken Humpty Dumpty April 27th, 2005
Dear Editor,
This is great news to all Nepalese to hear that the sacked PM had been arrested because those who call themselves political leaders are nothing more than leaders of vandalism, they are so corrupted they have sucked our mother land so bad that the country almost came to the end. The royal commission has proved that no one is above the law and corrupted person must face criminal charges. I welcome the move.
UAE: Oil-rich But In Renewable Energy Mode April 25th, 2005
Dear editor,
With big interest I watched a film sent yesterday in German TV about Dubai and the emirates. Especially the story about a wind energy plant located on Sir Baniyas Island off the Abu Dhabi coast. This shows that the oil rich emirates take responsibility for the resources they now own and for future options to serve the hunger for energy of the world. Among the possibilities of renewable sources the article was talking about they now also are looking towards the use of gas for new energy-efficient power plants. It would be interesting to know if there are any projects for the use of natural gas-operated stationary fuel cells as high efficient plants.
Mit freundlichem GruĂź / With best regards,
Sabine Kauffmann
DaimlerChrysler AG
Fabrikplanung Mercedes Car Group
Teamleiterin Technische Gebäudeausstattung
Sindelfingen
Germany
U.S.-EUROPE: Free Zone for Genetically Modified Maize? April 24th, 2005
Dear Editor,
I am from India. It is all the more difficult here to check the BT seeds. I would like to understand why the company produced Bt 10 at al if it was not approved. It amounts to ignore/violate deliberately at the risk of a small fine. In the process the company would have completed its field trials. The property of resistance to antibiotics may assert over a period of time, over many generations of experiment over humans.
They issued two varieties of BT cotton seeds here and one set failed and the other set seemed to be okay. Did not the company know it in advance?
We in India feel many field trials whether in drug or in seeds are going on without the knowledge of anybody at any level.
POLITICS: Balancing the Iraq Equation April 24th, 2005
Dear Editor,
On January 5, 2003 in The Philadelphia Inquirer there was an article about (former?) Middle East analyst Beth Osborne Daponte, who was given the specific task of estimating civilian deaths in the first Gulf War. When she came up with the number of 158,000 in the first year (including 40,000 Iraqi soldiers, bringing her numbers close to the Lancet’s), her employer told her not to talk or think about Iraq, her report was rewritten, she was reprimanded by the government, and her career was sidetracked.
In response to at least two recent instances where a story and an Op-Ed columnist from the Inquirer called the Lancet’s numbers unreliable and preferred the numbers from Iraq Body Count, I pointed out to them that Iraq Body Count uses figures from hospitals and the like, but many Iraqis either don’t go to the hospitals or when an entire house is bombed, there’s obviously no one alive to go to a hospital. There was no response from either party.
RELIGION: Why India Grieves for Pope John Paul II April 24th, 2005
Dear Editor,
Our secular position should not blind us to the reactionary role played by the Pope and other religious heads world over. Another reader says his contribution is his stance of anti-communism. This is not religion but politics. Communism does not dwell only with religion or atheism. It is a comprehensive holistic social science.
The Pope was a political figure and not merely a religion-head. That is why we have a right to criticise his politics. The religious leaders in India are increasingly acting decisively in the power game of politics. They are articulating democratic process inside churches, temples and mosques. In fighting against secularism they do not hesitate to employ fascist methods. Many a rulers, like, Bush, rally round such persons or they even create them.
Organised religion is a threat to growth of democracy and secularism.
DEVELOPMENT: A Subsidy North and South Can Agree On? April 23rd, 2005
Dear Editor,
Your article is perhaps making the wrong solution to solve the problem of getting expensive vaccines and drugs to third-world countries.
Price supports are an upside-down aid welfare program providing much for the rich and little for the poor. Price supports can create more monopolistic tendencies. If it failed with farm subsidies, it could also fail with vaccine and drug subsidies. Perhaps, one better approach of many would be to work with organizations such as OneWorld Health, the first not-for-profit pharmaceutical company targeting to produce alternative drug therapies for third-world countries. For example, for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis (chk), combined efforts of OneWorld Health, WHO, Gates Foundation and four health-care centres in the Indian State of Bihar found that this one disease could be treated with a less expensive drug costing a mere 1/12th of that of a more expensive drug. More efforts like this could be pursued.
The Economist has pointed out that 90 percent of the world’s disease burden falls on the developing world, yet only 3 percent of the research and development (R&D) expenditure of the pharmaceutical industry is directed towards these ailments. The rest goes towards treating diseases of the rich. In effect then, we have a problem of resource allocation. More R&D in developing countries and more manufacture of drugs should be encouraged in developing countries for expired patents. Vaccines and drugs could be manufactured in India for 1/10th the cost of the developed world. Attention should particularly focus for vaccines and drugs to treat HIV AIDS, malaria and diarrhoea. In this age of globalization, vaccines and drugs could also manufacture in third-world countries for third-world usage. Definitely, drug manufactures in the developed world would not budge, but at least for expired patents, this may be one route to take.
While the proposal for the subsidy of vaccines and drugs is said in good faith in the expectation that they would help alleviate the problems addressed, almost invariably it would create more problems than it would solve. Price supports can result in vaccines and drugs finding their way into the black-market in third-world countries and being re-exported to the developing world. Price supports would only delay, prevent and discourage more R&D for third-world country diseases. The setting up of manufacturing bases in third world countries for vaccines and drug therapies will be further protracted by price subsidies and encourage more monopolistic tendencies in the industrialized world. What is the difference between subsidizing vaccines and drugs and giving more aid to purchase such medications?
However, third-world countries should also do their share of the work. It is a truism that poverty is a bane for disease. A World Bank report on doing business in 2005 suggests a key cause of underdevelopment in poor nations is the burden of government regulation imposed on the poor who are trying to climb out of the poverty shell. Successful countries cited have less regulatory burden. The report sends a strong message to developing nations, that to succeed they should simply reduce regulation. The horrible lead times by the thousands upon thousands of business and government transactions in an economy and the result is huge protracted delays. Surely, it seems more important to de-bureaucratize the developing when pumping in foreign aid, even for vaccines and drugs for that matter. Industrialized countries spout heavy concern for the world’s poor, but these countries show a preference to keeping a fat bureaucracy. Removing unnecessary bureaucracy will pave the way for speeding up the delivery of goods and services in the developing world including vaccines and drugs all of which do not reach the target group or do so after much bureaucratic tangling. Corruption no doubt is the next big disease even affecting the physical disease crisis of developing countries and the mechanisms in place to get medication to the needy.
CORRUPTION: Double Trouble for Halliburton April 22nd, 2005
Dear IPS,
I generally find your reporting reliable and good at developing angles left of the mainstream. But today’s report by William Fisher on Halliburton’s corruption confuses rather clarifies issues. The article misses the point that after the initial no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq’s oil industry was handed to Halliburton, Congress added provisions to the military spending bills to require open-bidding and oversight. To circumvent these requirements and to continue paying Halliburton on the no-bid, cost-plus contract, the Bush Administration shifted to using the “Development Fund for Iraq.” That is, since fall of 2003, Halliburton has been paid with Iraqi oil revenues, including the residuals from the oil for food program earmarked for food and medicine, not US taxpayer dollars. Now, that’s a real scandal to pursue. Iraq oil revenues going to fatten the wallets at Halliburton while Iraqi’s suffer from lack of basic medicines, clean water, and electricity.
RIGHTS: US Vigilante Group Plans Month-long Patrol at Mexican Border April 21st, 2005
Dear Editor,
Doesn’t the Statue of Liberty have some symbolism that contradicts what the Minutemen are about?
The broken shackles of tyranny that are moulded at the feet of Liberty spoke for themselves to generations of people fleeing tyranny. The tablet in the statue’s left hand, inscribed July 4, 1776, refers to the Declaration of IndependenceÂtelling all comers of the American ideal that “all men are created equal.â€? The torch, held high in her right hand, hardly needs explanation as she lights the way to freedom and liberty. Does that not mean anything anymore? What has become of us as a nation? Paranoid and trigger happy.
ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH AMERICA: Controversy Rages Over Pulp Mill Plants April 21st, 2005
Dear Editor,
I have never seen such one-sided reporting. You would think tree farming and the related businesses that go with it are the work of the devil.
The trees planted in Chile, Uruguay and Brazil are most often planted on land that will not grow native forest. The growing of trees in plantations takes pressure off native forests, not the opposite as this and other related articles relate. It also provides jobs. Chile has a viable forest industry now where just 30 years ago it had none. This industry has provided scores of jobs and help raise the living and health standard of Chile’s people. I can only suppose the authors of your stories would prefer to keep them poor and in the back woods.
As to the polluting of rivers, if any company, paper and paper companies included, pollute they should suffer the full force of the law. Modern technology has made it where pulp mills do not and should not pollute. Any company that is so poorly managed that it cannot manage its waste should suffer the consequences.
Why is it that journalist are against everything regardless of the obvious social benefits?
RELIGION: New Pope May Have to Reconsider Role for Women April 19th, 2005
Dear Editor,
I strongly believe that men should be the sole gender for priesthood. I have been a Roman Catholic all my life and proud of my faith. Hopefully Pope Benedict XVI will continue to follow God’s leadership in this matter.
CARIBBEAN: Exodus of Nurses Costs Region Millions April 14th, 2005
Dear Editor,
A large number of professionals with high competence are being trained in developing countries only to find they are taken away by the developed countries. They take away these ready personnel because it costs for them too much to train their own people.
I strongly urge these countries make good the public investment made by the developing countries in training these recruits. Such payments shall be made
to the developing countries’ governments on some formula and they should invest it further to make such education accessible to their poor and deserving. Similarly corporations should pay the cost of training to the alumni of the recruited candidate and practically buy them. At present in poor countries upper strata is using these training opportunities as the cost is prohibitive to the poor.
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